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Tamale, Ghana – Executive Director of mental health charity organization Gub-Katimali Society (GKS), Sheikh Yakubu Abdul Kareem, has implored the Ministry of Health to without any further delay, post a psychiatrist to the Tamale Teaching Hospital.
With a population of about 5 million, there is not a single psychiatrist in any part of Northern Ghana; not even the only referral health facility, the Tamale Teaching Hospital.
About two years ago, the only psychiatrist serving Northern Ghana at the Tamale Teaching Hospital, Dr. Sore died.
Since the death of Dr. Sore who was also a lecturer at the department of psychiatry at the UDS School of Medicine and Health Sciences, no psychiatrist has been posted to the hospital to handle psychiatric related conditions.
This means that, referral cases from the Upper West, Upper East and the Northern Regions now have to travel over 600kilometres to either the Ankaful or Pantang Psychiaric Hospitals for advanced medical care.
But speaking to Savannah News in an interview shortly after inaugurating a “Maternal Mental Health Alliance” in Tamale on Thursday, Sheikh Abdul Kareem said no psychiatrist has been posted to the Tamale Teaching Hospital or any part of the North since the death of Dr. Sore.
“Since his death there hasn’t been any psychiatrist who has been transferred to Tamale. We depend upon senior community psychiatric nurses. For instance this project we’re running, there will be a time we would need psychiatrists to help us in our going round the communities to review cases. We have to hire psychiatrists from Sunyani or Kumasi to come and help us”, he pointed out.
He appealed to the government and for that matter the Ghana Health Service to endeavor to post at least two psychiatrists to the Tamale Teaching Hospital to deal with serious mental health problems from the Northern Region as well as the Upper West and Upper East Regions.
Sheikh Abdul Kareem further indicated that, the lack of medications for persons with mental illness and epilepsy (PWMIE) was still a major challenge that was derailing the gains chalked in recent years through sustained advocacies by charity organizations including his.
According to him, through the advocacies done by charities, many district assemblies have now recognized the need to assist stabilized PWMIE by assisting them with money and tools to start their own business while enrolling others unto skills training programmes.
But he decried the government’s failure to supply hospitals in the regions and districts with medications for the PWMIE thereby forcing majority of them who cannot afford to buy them to rely on the district assemblies and charities for support.
Projects Officer for GKS, Abdul-Razak Al-Hassan explained that, the Maternal Mental Health Alliance would serve as a common platform for members to collaborate and advocate for the welfare and well-being of PWMIE including pregnant women, breastfeed mothers and their children.
The MMHA, he said, would also serve as a platform for members to share knowledge and information related to mental health issues emanating from their work places, homes and communities which would serve as reference points for advocacy so as to ensure there is solution from the relevant state institutions charged to deal with such issues.
The MMHA members including various charity organisations, civil society groups and state departments are supposed to meet quarterly to discuss any issues related to mental health and devise strategies for sustained advocacy through the media, community durbars, churches and
mosques, staff and management meetings of members and other relevant platforms.
By Savannahnewsonline.com/Philip Liebs
